


The Girl Who Got Away

by Rozarka



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: AU, Cedric/Viktor friendship, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-09-23
Updated: 2006-09-23
Packaged: 2017-10-30 19:35:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/335321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rozarka/pseuds/Rozarka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was just that she'd been beautiful under him, wide-eyed and shaking on the brink of brand new experience, beautiful in a moment that only he would ever know her, so he felt he should take care to remember.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Girl Who Got Away

**Author's Note:**

> AU: Cedric survived. A birthday fic for Minisinoo. Thanks to Muridae for the beta. <3

 

Hermione Granger gets rain in her bridal veil. Just the right amount; a lucky scattering carried on the wind, small drops that feel like freckles hitting Cedric's face. In the next moment the sun chimes in again at the same time the church bells do, shivery April brightness making a double rainbow in the raindrops, and painting Hermione's bouquet of daffodils a vibrant watercolour wash of green and gold.

She's on the front steps of Ottery St. Catchpole's small Anglican church, a compromise perhaps to please both her Muggle parents and the Weasleys. And she's laughing. She looks so delighted, so smugly sweet -- for once fully aware how lovely she is, and part radiant and part shy about it. Weasley, tall and lanky at her side, looks dazed, his red hair standing on end because he keeps constantly messing with it. He should be dazed; he's just won the fucking lottery.

"Make her happy, you lucky bastard." Cedric's unaware that he's murmured the words out loud until a reply comes unexpectedly from his left.

"If he does not, you vill help me abduct her, maybe?" says a deep voice with an unmistakeable accent. "Is old tradition in my country."

Cedric turns, his face already starting a lopsided smile of recognition. The large broken nose, the unruly black fringe like shaggy-dog pelt falling into dark eyes -- there was a while he was unable to see that face without feeling the echoed agony of a Cruciatus haunting along his nerves, but they'd met often enough in the course of the war that he'd got over that involuntary wince. 

"Viktor Krum." He extends his hand. "Didn't know you were going to be here."

"Hermy-own-ninny invited me. I said I vould not come to party but I vould come vatch in church."

Krum's handshake is businesslike and firm, and it's hard to imagine what's going on behind his sullen, stoic expression. It was common knowledge back in the year of the Triwizard Tournament that Krum was completely smitten with Hermione, and Harry had mentioned to Cedric later that she and Krum exchanged long letters for years. That's another thing that's hard to imagine -- the taciturn Krum writing long letters -- but for her, Cedric somehow thinks he can see him doing it.

The Bulgarian doesn't look gutted, exactly. But then, neither does Cedric (he hopes), and that doesn't mean this feels _good_.

Gutted, though, he reflects momentarily, that's Neville Longbottom on the opposite side of the churchyard, flanked by Thomas and Finnigan. Poor decent devil, carried that torch since forever, but never got a foot in the door, never stood a chance.

"Neevil asked her, you know." Viktor has followed his gaze to Longbottom. "That year, to go to the Yule Ball vith him. And she vould haff gone vith him, I just happened to haff asked first."

"Longbottom asked her to the ball, huh? How do you know that?"

"She mentioned it once, in a letter, ven he vos missing during var and they vere afraid he'd been ..." Viktor shrugs. "She vos distraught over that. So much that I thought, 'and all the time I haff been keeping an eye on _Potter_...'"

Cedric snorts. Harry is Ron's best man, quietly grinning in black dress robes, his arm around Ron's little sister as he observes his newly-hitched best friends with perfect equanimity. "And all the time, you really _should_ have been watching Weasley."

Viktor's brow furrows. "Yes." He shakes his head in bewilderment, looking at Hermione with an intensity that's naked for the briefest moment. "Hermy-own-ninny does not look like girl vith one boy on every finger, does she?"

Cedric considers. She's poised with her hand on Weasley's arm, curvy and slender in her violet dress, her veil falling down her proud back in a soft cloud of lace. So different from the busy, small brown-and-gray sparrow that shadowed Potter during the war. 

"Well, I'd say today she does. But not on everydays. Part of the Granger charm, I suppose. Unlike her brains, she keeps it under a bushel so it rather takes you off guard when she turns it on you full blast."

Slowly, Viktor turns to him, bemused. "So. You, too, Diggory?"

Shuffling his feet for a moment, Cedric feels a blush snake over his skin. "Me too? Um, maybe."

But it had only been for a few days, during the tense, last escalation of the war. Him and Granger pent up in a safe house together, and the only entertainment there a Muggle board game called Ludo, with three pieces missing. They'd spent the days with their noses deep in books and parchment, desperately digging for dark magic, and calculating intricate arithmancy charts.

How they'd ended up playing Ludo for her virginity one night, he's still not sure, only that it was her suggestion and that half a bottle of Firewhiskey had something to do with it, and that even before his first throw of the dice, the lines between winning and losing had felt blurred indeed. 

"There's something about--" he begins, mid-thought, not even caring to keep the wistfulness out of his voice. "How she's so clever she can't help but shove it in your face, how she damn well expects you to keep up. And is beautiful so ... accidentally."

"And I vos so proud of being only one to appreciate these things." Viktor's morose chuckle only partly takes the edge off his grimace. "Is funny, is it not? You think there is time, and get complacent--"

But not them -- they'd known that time was in short supply, Hermione and Cedric. She'd won the Ludo game, and had got her first time in his narrow bed, a prize he'd tenderly conceded, for all that it had been requested with more determination than desire. He'd hesitated at her pragmatic approach, but she'd insisted that she wanted to know, what it was like, how it could be. That many young people did, in wartime.

And the week before, a girl had been caught by Death Eaters during a raid, raped and brutalized. Maybe Hermione'd been thinking of that too.

Cedric shakes himself. "Wake up, Krum. None of us stood a chance, she's had her eyes on Ron Weasley for years," he says, not cruelly, but firmly, and really as much to himself as to Viktor. He notices someone from the wedding party watching them -- Fleur Delacour, cool as you please on the oldest Weasley boy's arm, but the moment he meets her gaze and winks at her, she sends the two of them a conspiratorial grin and a girlish wave.

He sighs and pats the other man on his broad shoulder. "Come on, let's be good sports and congratulate the newlyweds."

Krum shoots him a speculative look under his hooded lids, but follows in his famous duck-footed slouch as Cedric starts across the churchyard.

And many gazes follow them, too. Krum is conspicuous wherever he goes, and Cedric well knows that his own fame as well as his looks make him stand out in any crowd. The Boy Who Should Have Died, saved by the Boy Who Lived, and the alliance they made against You-Know-Who, it's being written into history books now. He's heard so many variants of those epithets they mostly make him feel like gagging. Harry's quick defensive spell had stunted Pettigrew's killing curse -- Harry with his true fighter's heart, Harry who somehow breathes magic, galvanized in him so early by his mother's love and fear. After Harry had got them both out of there via the Portkey, Cedric had sworn him support, and Fleur and Krum had given theirs, too. He truly believes it made a difference, that allegiance of champions, that it shifted the politics before the war somewhat in Harry's favour. But he cringes under the war hero label, uncomfortably suspecting that it's mostly his looks that make people want to single him out that way.

And it was Harry who faced Voldemort in the end, with Weasley and Granger at his side, just like they'd all known it must be. He remembers the night after that battle, Harry sleeping like the dead in his room at 12 Grimmauld Place, and Weasley and Granger grimly guarding his rest as though they didn't need sleep just as much, as if anyone would have had the heart to disturb any of them anyway. She'd been dirty and blood-streaked, her hair a dusty halo, eyes glazed with tiredness and relief, curled tightly into the sheltering curve of Weasley's arm. They'd looked like babes huddled together in the woods. And Cedric had taken one look at them and felt some small unvoiced hope inside him quietly concede defeat. 

"Viktor, Cedric!" Hermione's eyes light up with fondness and she hugs first one then the other of them, as they make it to the front of the crowd of spectators. "I'm so glad you could come -- you will come back to the Burrow with us for the reception?"

Viktor shakes his head regretfully. "I haff an appointment; I must be back in Vratsa this afternoon." Cedric notes with amusement that Ron looks as relieved as Hermione appears disappointed at this news.

Viktor takes Hermione's hand gently and brings the back of it to his lips, holding her gaze for a prolonged instant that sends a flighty warm blush over her face. Then he shakes the groom's hand with a vigour that brings a wince to Weasley's eyes, and Cedric glances down to conceal a grin. "Please accept my best vishes," says the Bulgarian formally, "for your marriage."

"Thanks." Weasley wiggles his hand discreetly after the handshake, giving Krum a suspicious look. Cedric smiles and reaches out his own hand, shaking Weasley's in a far more forgiving manner.

"Congratulations on your lovely wife, Ron." He extends his hand to Hermione, who surprises him by ducking past his arm, getting up on tiptoe and brushing her lips over his cheek. Soft, sweet, the way she did once before.

"Be happy," he mutters to her, his smooth smile startled off his face, and his well-planned words chased away too.

"I will. We will." She sounds so very certain, confident to make it so, and then she whispers, only for his ears. "Thanks, Cedric, for ... that time, you know, thank you."

And she's gone with a quick warm look over her shoulder before he can even think to say, thank _you_ \-- bride and groom proceeding down the row of guests waiting to congratulate them, and Cedric and Viktor stand still and watch for a minute, until without exchanging a word, they begin walking side by side towards the churchyard gates. 

Cedric thinks he notices Viktor looking at him, although when he glances aside, Viktor's gaze is fixed straight ahead. 

"You are better sport than I am," observes Viktor.

"Hufflepuff," Cedric reminds him, with a pride not entirely free of self-depreciation.

The other man gives a short chuckle. "Yes. Hermy-own-ninny has alvays maintained, I vould haff been sorted Slytherin."

"A house that would have benefited from your presence there," Cedric comments diplomatically.

"She gave me her first kiss," states Viktor after a while. "There is alvays that."

"She gave me her first--" Cedric's face flames as he realizes what he was just about to blurt out and that Viktor has played him with humiliating ease. Viktor has stopped dead, glaring at him, and Cedric swears quietly. "Fuck, Krum. I'm usually more of a gentleman than that, and you too, I'd like to think."

Viktor rubs his jaw with his knuckles, scrutinizing him with a glower, and Cedric stares back defiantly. He's braced for a punch to his face, a broken nose -- he thinks distractedly that they will have a matched pair then, he and Viktor.

"You vere good to her -- treated her vell?" asks Viktor finally, eyes narrowed, a question Cedric had not expected at all and that makes him draw a stumped breath.

"I didn't get the option to treat her as well as I'd have liked. It was a wartime thing, something that ... something she wanted, just." Merlin, could he sound any more of a cad about it? "And of course I," he amends, shame-faced. "Wanted it. Too. And _of course_ I was bloody well good to her. Christ, Viktor."

"Vy didn't she ask Veasley?" Viktor demands.

Cedric shrugs, finally getting good and annoyed. His breath hitches on something that might be anger, might be worse. "How the hell would I know? Maybe it would have meant too much, felt like too much of a risk to ask, in case he didn't want ... Maybe I simply was there at the right time and didn't matter enough to scare her from asking." God, he's thought it many times, but saying it out loud fucking smarts, all the same.

At the week's end, Weasley had come for her, picking her up for what would prove to be the final showdown. She'd left with a faraway gaze, a tense set to her shoulders and a shy brush of lips over Cedric's cheek, and he'd been left with this lingering ache at the thought of her. It wasn't a broken heart or anything that daft. Just that she'd been beautiful under him, wide-eyed and shaking on the brink of brand new experience, beautiful in a moment that only he would ever know her, so he felt he should take care to remember. He remembers it now, and aches a little, all over again.

"She smiled," says Cedric, more to recall it to himself than to placate Viktor. "I did make her smile for a couple of days."

At long last, Viktor's mouth quirks up with a reluctance that has both envy and grudging generosity in it. "I guess she could haff picked someone somevot vorse than you for the job, Diggory."

"Why, _thank_ you," says Cedric with a dry, brief laugh, torn from useless nostalgia by the teasing lilt of Viktor's broken English.

"My appointment in Vratsa this afternoon," says Viktor abruptly, "is vith a bottle of excellent rakija, at a bar in my neighbourhood. I vonder, vould you care to share it vith me?"

Cedric pretends to consider for a moment, but the truth is he hasn't got anything in particular planned for the weekend, and he's rediscovered that he rather enjoys the bracing combination of Viktor's blunt manner and shrewd humour. "Why not? I'll just pick up a couple of things at home before we Apparate. Hell, let's get drunk."

Viktor gives a sombre nod. "Absolutely."

In a stroke of inspiration, Cedric adds, "And when we get sufficiently plastered, let's drunk-Apparate to Ottery St. Catchpole and abduct the blushing bride from Weasley's freckled fingers."

They exchange glances, straight-faced both of them -- then their mouths twitch and they burst into laughter on cue.

"Can you imagine her face?" Viktor's shoulders shake. "She vould not be blushing, this particular bride, she vould be hexing our balls off."

"God, yes. Ouch. On second thoughts, let's choose life. And functional manhood."

Viktor looks at Cedric, still chuckling. "Do you ever vatch Muggle movies, Diggory?"

"Occasionally," says Cedric, shrugging in surprise. "How so?"

Viktor's grin is wide and white in his tanned, rugged face. "Because I think," he says, placing a heavy arm over Cedric's shoulders, "that this may be beginning of a beautiful friendship."

Cedric doesn't get the joke, but finds he appreciates the sentiment nevertheless. They continue down the road, two long-standing allies, champions and rivals, jubilant church bells still tolling at their backs for the girl who got away.

-end-


End file.
